HAWK

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN: INCOGNITO (2/5)

The BMR lab was a huge hexagonal room filled with dozens upon dozens of cylindrical tanks.

Inside the tanks were animals.

Lions. Gorillas. Wolves. Snakes. And those were just the ones Kas could see. There were several of each, though it was hard to tell if any of them were alive - their containers were filled with a viscous pink liquid that suspended the creatures like insects trapped in rose-tinted amber.

'Are they dead?' Kas murmured.

'They are in suspended animation.' Astrid replied, hovering just outside the doors. 'You need to keep walking.'

Kas swallowed her shock and urged her feet onwards again. Astrid followed a thick white line that trailed the perimeter of the lab, leading Kas around the edge of the room and bypassing the tanks. There were a lot of people milling around, all wearing identical white containment suits.

'Take some of these,' Astrid said. Kas saw her hovering in front of a wall rack of what looked like thin glass tablets. Kas reached out and took one of them, sliding it out with ease. It was ten-inches at its longest and very lightweight.

'What are they?' Kas asked.

'Data-stacks. Take as many as you can carry.'

Kas began stacking them one on top of the other until she had a pile over ten high.

'That should be enough,' Astrid said. 'Let's go.'

Kas held the stack in both hands and carried them like a tall pile of books as she followed Astrid along the white path.

'Don't I look suspicious?' she asked.

'You look fine. Just don't drop them.'

'Yeah, thanks.'

Kas couldn't help but steal glances at the tanks in the middle of the room as she passed them by. Most of the workers seemed to be gathering around one tank in particular. It contained an absolute hulk of an animal that looked to Kas like a ten-foot grey rat with no tail. She glimpsed the text on the tank's side and understood what it really was.

BM-K2-311: BEAR

The bear had been shaved of all its fur. Kas's heart ached with fury as she realised it was most likely being prepped for its metal-graft.

A bear bio-mech...? Swanne, you monster...

She forced herself to look away and instead focused on the white path ahead of her, but the image of the poor animal was raw in her mind. The further she walked, the more she could feel a slight chill bleeding through the fibres of her skinsuit. She checked her visor's HUD and saw the surrounding temperature had plummeted to zero-point-three degrees.

She saw a couple of workers walking in her direction and lowered her head, but neither of the workers gave her so much as a glance and they passed her by unchallenged.

'Over here,' Astrid said. Kas followed her to the wall where she hovered above a big black cart three-feet tall and twice as long. It was one of the anti-gravity trolleys she'd seen the workers pushing through the corridor.

'Start loading the slides into the port.'

Kas rested the stack of tablets on top of the cart and saw Astrid loitering above a slim, dark rectangle on its side. She took one of the glass slides and held it sideways over the black rectangle. It looked like it fit perfectly, so she pushed it inside and the cart ate it up.

'Keep going,' Astrid urged. Kas did. She was down to her last data-stack when the cart bleeped and a short line of text lit up next to the handle.

CART FULL

'Now grab the handle and let's go,' Astrid said. Kas gripped the long bar-handle at the cart's back and pulled, expecting it to budge - but it was about as easy as pulling a tank.

'It won't move,' she said.

'Press the AGM button,' Astrid replied. Kas looked to the small row of coloured buttons on the near corner of the cart and saw a little blue one labelled 'AGM'. She pressed it and a gentle vibration worked its way through her fingers and dissipated into her arms. The cart shifted and suddenly felt light in her grip. She tugged gently on the handle and the trolley glided backwards with all the resistance of a balloon.

'Follow me,' Astrid said.

Kas swung the cart around and pushed it after Astrid who was fluttering along the path towards a bend. As Kas caught up with her, she saw the surrounding wall gave way to a tall, wide window that overlooked another lab one level down.

She spotted Swanne immediately.

The governor was hard to miss, standing atop the circular dais in the centre of the room, still dressed in her deep red skinsuit. No ugly white containment suit for her. Kymeira was curled up by her feet, licking her huge silver paws as if oblivious to the fact she was a machine.

There were at least thirty workers that Kas could see, all in white containment suits, all standing behind rows of long black desks on either side of the dais. It reminded Kas of science class at school, except on a much bigger scale. The desks were inset with computer screens, and next to every one of them were stacks of large glass slides like the kind Kas had just collected.

Kas happened to look to the end of one of the rows where she suddenly spotted a worker barely half the height of the others. Even under the white suit, Kas could tell by her movements that it was Worm.

What are you doing here, kid...?